


panahedan

by mahariels



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, insult sten: +4 approval, party camp conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 15:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12484900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: the warden does not sleep.





	panahedan

It was night but the Warden rarely slept.  It was not healthy.  The Warden was not Qunari.  If she had been, she would have been sent to the tamassrans for counseling long ago.  But the Warden was  _not_  Qunari.  She was  _bas_ , and she sat by the fire and stared into it, barely blinking.  The Warden was  _bas_ and this had been difficult for him.  A thing, yes.  There was something almost feline about the flat gleam of her eyes in the flame.  He thought that if he approached from a different angle he might see only her eyes glow in the dark, a reflection.  But she was not a thing and not an animal. Not anymore than he was.

She was the Warden. She was a pebble in his boot.  She had stared him down at Haven, a snarl on her lips.  And there had been a stirring in his chest he did not like and did not trust.  
  
“Warden,” he said, and sat down next to her.  Even seated, he towered above.  She did not seem to notice or care.

She did not look up from the flames.  If he did not know better he might have thought she was praying.  The Warden did not pray.  In battle she cursed her enemies, loud and long enough to make any  _karasaad_ blush.  She said these things with the fervor of a tamassran in the temples of Qunandar.  For a  _bas_ who touched no one and let no one touch her she had an imagination when it came to such things.  This was not true: he did not know who she touched or did not touch in the life before she was a Warden.

“Sten.”

“You should sleep.”

“I should.  I don’t.”

“Do Wardens need no sleep?”

“If we didn’t sleep, we wouldn’t have dreams of the archdemon.”

“This is a joke.”

“You’re learning.”  There was no humor in her voice.  Her lip bled sluggishly from a wound she had sustained earlier when a hurlock smashed its gauntlet into her face.  She had refused Wynne’s healing.  She would not use a poultice.  Occasionally she touched the wound with her tongue and the scab would break.  This was infuriating.  If you were injured, you accepted healing.  If your weapon was broken, you took it to the smith.  There was nothing righteous in pain for its own sake.

“You enjoy suffering.”

For a moment he had startled her. She looked up and her forehead creased.  A frown.  But she controlled her reaction and said nothing.  Normally he liked this quality in her.  The ability to sit in silence without filling it with needless words.  They had spent many hours sitting by the fire in silence.  He collected his thoughts.  He did not know what she did during that time.  But now she had used it against him.

“The wound.  You do not let Wynne heal you unless you cannot stand.”

“Yes,” the Warden agreed.  Her voice was pitched low and sounded like walking through the rocks at the bottom of a Seheron waterfall.  Her right ear, ragged with scar tissue, twitched.

“This is not wise.”

“I’m not wise.  You’ve told me this before. Almost fought me about it, unless you’ve forgotten already.”

He considered this.  He did not look at her.  The flames crackled and snapped.  “You told me once that it is possible to change your lot in life.”

Then the Warden did laugh.  He had not heard the sound before.  It did not suit her.  She said, “I meant that you could change what you do for a living.  Or murder your way out of an alienage and become a Warden instead of… whatever you are in an alienage.  Not suddenly gain wisdom in a few months.  Some things are possible, some aren’t.”

“It is not like you to admit defeat.”  He was not joking because Qunari did not joke.

She bared her teeth at him in the darkness.  The Warden did not smile.  “There’s a limit to the impossible things I can do and I haven’t hit it yet.  Don’t want to waste them, yeah?” She picked up a broken branch from beside her and threw it into the flames, which sputtered up and showered them with sparks.  The Warden did not flinch.  Nor did Sten.

“You did not answer my question.”

“Was that a question, Sten?”

He considered this.  “No.”

“I don’t enjoy suffering.”

“But you do not accept healing.”  He paused.  “I will continue, or you can sleep.”

She bared her teeth again.  “You bargain like a merchant.”

In another life, Sten might have been insulted.  He was of the  _antaam_ ,  _sten_  of the  _beresaad_ , the Arishok’s vanguard in Thedas.  Not some… shopkeep.  But this was the Warden, and he began to truly understand that Common had layers of meaning that were confusing and thrilling.  When the Warden said  _you bargain like a merchant_  he felt the stirring again.  She insulted him deeply, and yet, he felt like she had seen him. 

“Warden, I am waiting.”

“I don’t  _enjoy_  suffering. I just—-there’s no need for Wynne to waste the effort.  Not for something like this.  Not for me.  It’s nothing.”  Reflexively her tongue ran over her lip again.  He knew she must taste the salt and iron of it though she did not react.  

“Not for you?”

“I don’t like where this is going, Sten. Cut it out, or  _kadanshok defransdim vashedan_.”

There were qunari of her race but they were different, somehow, because they  _were_  qunari.  He did not much associate with the  _viddathari_ and the few times he had, it was as natural to hear qunlat from their mouths as it was to hear from anyone else.  There were elves among the  _viddathari_ but it was strange to hear those words from the mouth of the Warden.  He wished to hear her say them again.  

“Your accent is atrocious.”

 _“As-eb vashe-qalab_ ,” the Warden said solemnly to him. 

“You are cheating, Warden.”

“You enjoy it, I think.”  She squinted up at him and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.  She did not smile and the flat gleam in her eye, the one that she used on the flame, was fixed on him.

“Where did you learn those phrases?”

“Oh, you know.  Shems would hire qunari mercenaries and bring them as bodyguards if they had business in the alienage, just in case we got the wrong idea. I’d talk to them sometimes.”

“If they were mercenaries, they were not Qunari.”

She rolled her eyes.  “They hired  _Tal-Vashoth_  then.”

“That is better.”  He was aware that he sounded a little smug but it was such a strange comfort to hear familiar words and concepts from the Warden.  If he could not go home, at least there was some small piece of it here with him.  That it came from her…  It was too much to hope for, that she might see the wisdom of the Qun, that they might not meet on the battlefield one day, but fight side by side on it as they did now.  Such thoughts were dangerous and he shoved them aside.  

“So you do not think yourself worth healing, and do not sleep because you have nightmares.”

“It’s not that I’m not  _worth_  it,” she said, suddenly frustrated.  "It’s just that we have limited resources.  I’ve gone without.  I  _can_ go without, probably better than Alistair can, anyway.  That’s all.”  This was not all.  There was a restlessness in the Warden, the need to fight, to focus.  It was not all, but she would not admit this now.

“And the sleep?”

“It’s not dreams.  I just hate wasting  _time_.”

“Sleep is a necessity for any warrior.”

The Warden threw a clod of dirt at him, but he let it splatter against his chest plate, showering him with tiny pebbles and soil.  He thought perhaps it made her feel better.  Thus, it was worth it.  He considered this tactic for future evenings. 

“I’m done answering questions, unless you’ve got an acorn to trade me.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Sten.  I’m hard to kill.”

“You will not be so hard to kill when you are sleep-deprived and blood-weary.”

The Warden stared at him with an unreadable expression.  Many of the other  _bas_  wore their hearts on their sleeves—or, like the Crow, always smiled, no matter the situation—but the Warden was flat as stone.  There was a battle of sorts here.  Who would look away first.  Whether she would give in to his concern.  In a way he had already lost by showing such a thing at all.  Secretly he knew this, though he was not sure if the rest of them did.  Whether the Warden did.

“I will take your words under advisement,” she said at last.  It was without resentment.  The fire had begun to burn down to embers, and the Warden stood.  “Good night, Sten.”

 _“Panahedan,_ ” he said, and meant it.


End file.
